The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

If ‘councilism’ as an organised current has disappeared today, this is to be explained as much by the fragility of
its basis in the 1960s and 70s (‘the students’ revolt’; ‘anti-bureaucratism’ and ‘anti-authoritarianism’) as by its
negation of all organised activity. The councilist milieu has been less a milieu of structured groups with coherent
positions – like those of council communism in the 1930s – than a nebulous cloud. This ‘cloud’ brought together
the remnants of the Socialisme ou Barbarie current and the Situationists. 1289
Today, with the disappearance of the Dutch and German communist left, there are almost no groups left that
have any continuity with the old council communism. Rather there exists a current of ‘councilist’ ideas that
manifest itself in the majority of the European countries on a more or less large scale can appear ephemerally
through episodic periodicals or circles, but never in an organised and theoretically coherent way. Born in
reaction to the leninism, and to the bolshevism of the communist parties or also to the ‘leftist’ groups (maoists
and trotskyists), ‘councilism’ is politically unorganised and theoretically an informal current. Its bases are rather
the rejection of ‘substitutionism’ and of all forms of organisation, in the same way as the old anarchist current.
As such, it cannot have ‘formal’ and ‘organised expressions but remains at the mercy of social events. As a
‘spontaneous’ current, its expressions are spontaneous and ephemeral. From this point of view, it can express the
revolt of the intellectual layers of the petty bourgeoisie, against all bureaucracy, as was the case after 1968. But
such a revolt appears and rises spontaneously from the momentary event.
Nevertheless by its ‘anti-Leninism’ and its critique of all ‘apparatuses’ councilism has also crystallised, from
about 1968 till 1975, the rejection of the official trade unions and of parliamentarism by significant numbers of
radicalised workers. Above all it has expressed the mistrust of minorities of workers with regard to any political
organisation, seen as ‘deadly’ in itself. In this sense ‘councilism’ appears more as a spontaneous reaction of
these minorities during important social struggles. As an immediate reaction it cannot be a structured current, but
is rather a nebulous movement, whose shape is difficult to grasp; a mixture of both ‘modernism’ at the level of
everyday life and ‘contestation’ of all organisation at the political level.
But, as political current, it is attached without any doubt to the left communism of the Twenties, which fought in
an organized form the politics of the social democrat and leninist currents, whereas a new ‘revolutionary
movement’ emerged on radically new bases: combat for autonomous workers councils and a new society free of
any allegedly ‘workers State’ and party dictatorship.
the ICC’s section in Holland, whose members came from the councilist milieu. Another of today’s currents, closer to the
tradition of ‘bordigism’, is the British Communist Workers’ Organisation, which was originally a Scottish councilist group
that came from Solidarity. Formed in 1974, at the beginning of the 1980s the CWO was associated with the Italian Battaglia
Comunista group, which had split in 1952 with Bordiga’s International Communist Party (ICP). In every case, the break
with ‘councilism’ was made possible by the personality of Marc Chirik, former trotskyist then bordigist militant,
charismatic leader of the ICC, who remained always under the influence of Leninist conceptions. For the political trajectory
of Marc Chirik, see our notice, to be published in the “Maitron” (Dictionnaire du mouvement ouvrier français), and the
biographical Annex, in our work, Le Courant ‘bordiguiste’, 1919-1999, Italie, France, Belgique, Zoetermeer (Netherlands),
1999.
1288 The list of these groups is not short. In France, we can mention, among many others, the groups ‘Mouvement
communiste’ (Jean Barrot’s group) and ‘Négation’ around 1975; in Scandinavia, the groups already cited: ‘Kommunismen’
and ‘Internationell Arbetarkamp’; in Portugal, 1975, Combate, etc.
1289 Although they sprang from a different tradition, the Situationist groups were the first, prior to 1968, to rediscover council
communism [see: René Riésel, ‘Preliminaries on Councils and Councilist Organization’, in: Internationale Situationniste,
No. 12, 1969. Translation and edition: Ken Knabb, Situationist International Anthology, 1995, Bureau of Public Secrets,
P.O. Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701).
322